What's Your Home Worth?
To you, your house means everything. It’s a treasure trove of memories of incalculable worth. A portion of this amount is the approximate value of your home recognized by those who don’t live there. There are a number of ways used to come up with this number. Two ways to be exact – an appraisal and a comparative market analysis.
Appraisal
Typically costing between $250-$350, an appraisal is a certified appraiser's valuation of your home at the present time. The appraiser looks at a number of things in order to come up with a representative price of your home. A few of these include:
- External characteristics – "curb appeal," age and condition, lot size, view, topography, popularity of an architectural style of property, landscaping, water/sewage systems, sidewalk, paved road, etc.
- Internal characteristics – your home's design, including square footage, size and number of rooms; construction quality; appliance condition; demonstrated "pride of ownership;" heating type; energy efficiency; etc.
- Supply and demand – the number of homes for sale versus the number of buyers, how quickly the homes in your area sell, etc.
- Location – desirability of a particular school district and/or neighborhood, availability of public transportation, proximity to shopping, etc.
Comparative Market Analysis
The second way to determine an estimate of your property's market value is for a real estate agent (usually) to use the sale prices of comparable homes in the neighborhood. Typically free and much more informal than the thorough examination done by a certified appraiser, this approach looks at recent sales of at least three properties in a general (or similar) neighborhood that are comparable in building age, style, size, location and construction. However, it's important to remember that this process can't take into account things like whether the seller was desperate to "unload" the home, or the buyer paid much more than the asking price because there were other interested parties. It's easy to see now that market value and sales price are not always the same.
To arrive at an estimated market value, dollar adjustments are then made for differences between your home and the comparable properties that have sold.
And remember, when the time comes to refinance the home which houses so many memories or purchase a new one where you can make even more, contact the experts at 1-800-734-REFI. We"ll customize a loan just for you.
